


The Light Beneath

by SouthSideStory



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ben Solo Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Dark Side Rey, F/M, Jedi Ben Solo, Reverse Age Gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 09:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14639094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: “Rey” is what the older scavengers called her, after the name on that filthy rebel helmet she grew so attached to. It was never her real name, so when she burns down all she loves, she doesn’t hesitate to discard it. Kira Ren, she’ll call herself. There is one thing she can’t kill, though, and his name is Ben Solo.





	The Light Beneath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [politicalmamaduck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/gifts).



> This is a gift fic for politicalmamaduck, in exchange for her generous donation to ReyloTrashCompactor’s GoFundMe to finance IVF. If you would like to help ReyloTrashCompactor and her amazing wife become parents, please donate. And if you would like to send me a prompt and proof of a donation, I’m happy to write more Reylo gift fics. <3 Please PM me on tumblr, where I'm also southsidestory, for more info.
> 
> Link to GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/ivf-for-mer-and-kat

.

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**I**

**Rey**

Ben Solo follows Rey everywhere. A boy of nine, he’s curious and hot tempered, slow to smile and quick to frown. He still carries that sense of wonder that children hold onto until the world strips it away. Rey wonders what will take it from Ben, and she hopes that it isn’t something she’ll have to witness.

“Rey!”

He runs up to her as she’s headed to her hut, and stars, he’s growing like a weed.

“What do you want now?” she asks.

“Will you teach me--”

Rey walks faster. “No.”

Ben huffs, then grabs her wrist. “But you didn’t let me finish!”

Rey pulls out of his clinging grasp and says, “Don’t touch me again.”

Ben recoils, gaze fixed on the grass beneath his feet. “Sorry.”

Rey sighs and looks heavenward. The stars are starting to come out, peeking through the purple dusk.

_The boy is a distraction,_ Snoke whispers, like a talkative bug in her ear. _A weakness._

“What did you want me to show you?” Rey asks.

Ben smiles as widely as she’s ever seen. He’s a sweet thing under that nasty temper and sharp tongue, a good kid.

She sees herself cutting him down, slicing him in half with one stroke of her lightsaber, and in her vision it’s red instead of blue.

_It would be easy._

Rey shakes off Snoke’s intrusion, then takes Ben to the training temple.

.

.

She dreams of Jakku: the sun beating down on her, blistering her skin until it cracks open and her life bleeds out, leaving behind nothing but bones.

Then she’s back home, at the training temple, and the world is aflame. Embers fluttering past like fireflies, the scents of smoke and blood thick in the air. And the saber she holds is scarlet, sparking, the hilt hot in her hands.

Rey wakes crying, her temples throbbing from her visions, Snoke’s voice so close, murmuring promises of power and freedom, if only she’ll give up the Jedi life.

“No,” she hisses. “Get out of my head.”

But he won’t, she knows. He’s always there, witnessing, waiting for her to break.

.

.

Her parents were junk traders, and they sold her like any other piece of scrap.

_Rey_ is what the older scavengers called her, after the name on that filthy rebel helmet she grew so attached to. She was so young when her mother and father handed her over to Unkar Plutt, so broken by the shame of being left behind that she forgot her real name.

She wakes to Master Luke standing over her with a green lightsaber ignited, ready to murder her in her sleep, and she summons her own saber and strikes first.

_I told you. He cares for you less than your filthy parents did._

Rey was never her real name, so when she burns down all she loves, she doesn’t hesitate to discard it. Kira Ren, she’ll call herself.

There is one thing she can’t kill, though, and his name is Ben Solo. She finds him crying, hiding in his hut, little blue training saber held in trembling hands. Kira takes the saber from him, extinguishes it, and tosses it aside. _Come with me,_ she almost says. It’s the only way to spare him that won’t earn her Snoke’s wrath, but she can’t do it. Ben is temperamental and sensitive, if good--for now. He’d be easy to turn to the dark side, she thinks.

But Kira looks around at the world she’s ruined, the comrades she’s slain, and she doesn’t want that for Ben. She wants better for him. So she leaves him behind, alive and alone.

.

.

**II**

**Ben**

The _Millennium Falcon_ wasn’t built to hold fifty rebels, and Ben doesn’t know what to do. He’s a Jedi, that more self-taught than not, and he isn’t equipped to lead the bruised remains of the Resistance. His mother steps up to organize them, dividing rations and medical supplies. Then she makes a plan for where to go, where to hide. Poe takes the reins when she needs to rest, and soon they’re headed to Jemanon.

Ben hides in the gunnery while Poe pilots. He can barely tolerate this ship so soon after his father’s death. Rey is responsible for that, and so much else. Rey, Kira, Supreme Leader--whatever she calls herself. She plunged her lightsaber right through his dad’s heart like it was nothing, while Ben stood far above them, helpless.

As if the memory sparked her presence, he feels her behind him. The gentle darkness of her signature in the Force, soft as snowflakes settling on his skin. He can taste her on the back of his tongue, cool and spun sugar sweet.

“Go away,” Ben says. “I have nothing to say to you.”

Rey is quiet for so long that, if he couldn’t still feel her behind him, he would think she disappeared.

He climbs out of the gunnery chair and walks toward her. She looks like hell, her long hair lank, lilac shadows around her eyes. But even exhausted she’s still beautiful, this woman who has taken so much from him. He should hate her, and he does, but that isn’t all he feels, and the only one he can despise for that is himself.

Rey says his name so tenderly, then somehow quieter, “I didn’t know. When I killed him, I didn’t know he was your father.”

Ben grabs the front of her black robes, and it feels as real as if she’s truly standing here, the fabric rough in his grasp and her breath warm on his throat.

“You knew he was someone’s father, or husband, or brother,” he says. “You knew he was an old man with no chance against you, and you slaughtered him anyway.”

“He shot at me. What was I supposed to do? Let him go?”

Heat burns behind his eyes, and then he feels the wet of tears spilling over. He’s crying like a child in front of Rey, murderer and enemy and--something more that he doesn’t want to recognize.

“You should have stayed with me. We could have ruled together,” she says. “You said I didn’t have to be alone, but I am. And you are too.”

Before he can answer, she’s gone from his grasp, carried away by the Force like a feather on the wind.

.

.

The next time they truly see one another, it’s on a battlefield, his blue saber locked against her red. It spits fire, as angry and broken as the kyber crystal at its heart.

“Come with me,” Rey says again, same as she has every time they meet on that unnameable bridge built between them. “You belong on my side, Ben.”

“I belong with you,” he says. “Not the First Order.”

It’s easier to say than to believe. Speaking against the darkness is so much simpler than fighting it.

Rey fumbles at that, and he lands a strike to her upper arm. Only a graze, but his heart stutters at the smell of burning flesh. He could have mangled her with one blow.

What is he fighting for, if not to kill? What is he doing, if not protecting the Resistance at all costs?

Dancing, he thinks. This is only a dance.

.

.

It takes them all of three months to cross the line from adversaries to lovers, at least for the space of a stolen night on a hidden world. They meet, of all places, on the moon where Luke’s training temple once stood. Ten years carried away the ash and embers of Rey’s betrayal, and new, green life grows up among the ruins.

Ben lays her down on the thick grass and kisses her until she opens to him. Her body is tense, and he feels her fear as vividly as if it’s his own. She wants him, but she’s afraid of being overpowered, taken, made vulnerable.

“It’s all right,” Ben says. “I won’t hurt you.”

He could, if he changes his mind. He should, even: fight her, and if he’s lucky, take her back to the Resistance in chains. But he won’t, because she’s worried her way into his heart, and his weakness for her is boundless.

They undress in the twilight, their small world cast in vespertine purple. Rey lies on her back, naked except for the shadows, and pulls him on top of her.

Ben lied, though he didn’t mean to. He does hurt her when they come together, soft to hard, despite working her to wetness with his fingers. Rey cries out, a wounded, girlish noise that makes her sound much younger than thirty. Right now it doesn’t matter that she’s older than him, or the leader of the First Order. Because in this moment she’s simply a woman beneath a man, the two of them taking from each other what they never gave to anyone else.

When they finish, Ben kisses his way down to Rey’s stomach and rests his head there, cheek pillowed against her belly. She threads her fingers through his hair, stroking over his scalp in calming, rhythmic scratches. He’s found peace in the place where Kira Ren was born. Ben knows it’s twisted, but here he is all the same.

“I love you,” he says, and waits.

Rey only holds her silence, even though he can feel the hungry truth between them, alive and electric with need.

“Go on,” Ben whispers. “Say it.”

And she does.

.

.

**III**

**Kira**

Kira shouldn’t have given her love to Ben, no more than she should’ve gotten on her back for him. But she did both, and now she has to live with the consequences.

It can’t hurt any worse to say it once more, so the next time the Force brings them together, she says, “I miss you, and--I love you.”

It must be the middle of the night wherever Ben is, because he’s dressed in nothing but loose grey pants that ride low on his stomach, showing off his breadth and strength. His silky hair is mussed and his eyes sleep-swollen. He doesn’t say it back, and Kira wishes that she hadn’t handed over that truth for a second time.

“Did you kill her?” he asks.

She sighs. “Did I kill who?”

He stands, towering over her, and she’s suddenly thankful that he can’t really hurt her. At least, she thinks he can’t. He’s never tried to harm her with his bare hands when they meet this way.

“Jessika Pava,” Ben says. “She was a pilot, captured after the battle on Kamino. Did you kill her?”

Kira looks away. “I interrogated her. She’s… Ben, you know I can’t tell you where she is.”

“So she’s alive then?” he asks. “You spared her.”

“Why do you care so much? Have you--is she your lover?”

Ben laughs, then says, “No, just a friend, and I can’t believe you asked me that.”

Kira steps backward, forcing more tangible space between them. “Why not? We didn’t make any promises to each other.”

“No,” Ben agrees, “but I didn’t think we had to.”

She wants the opportunity to say something, anything, but the bridge between them collapses, stones crumbling into the river of the ever-flowing Force.

_Come back,_ she wants to scream. _Come back for me._

.

.

She releases Jessika Pava with a message for the Resistance. Terms for subservient peace that she knows Leia Organa won’t accept, but that isn’t the point. She’s sending Jessika home for Ben’s peace of mind, and he’ll know it.

.

.

**IV**

**Ben**

He can’t forgive her. It doesn’t work like that; Rey has betrayed too much, stolen too much, for Ben to overlook. But this love he carries seems to be unshakeable, so forgiven or not, he needs her.

They go back to the ruined temple a year after the battle on Crait, and there’s something different about Rey. The light that was woven through her darkness stands out brighter now. He can feel the conflict in her, stronger than ever. And although he knows she isn’t ready to return, when he kisses her, he can feel that it’s just a matter of time.

.

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**V**

**Rey**

There’s a fire within her where ice used to be, a heat Rey craves in soft moments of silence. Warmth that Ben teaches her, passes to her on sweet kisses. It lives under her skin now, this light she swore off, as real as his hand in hers.

.

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_fin_


End file.
